


burn

by orphan_account



Series: gravity i never learned [7]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 00:19:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5647066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I can't—" Eliza says, and turns away. She doesn't seem to have control over the words coming out of her mouth; she doesn't seem to have control over the sharp hot anger that's living inside her chest. And she is, she's angry, she's so angry and she doesn't know what to do with it all. When she'd first found out she'd been numb, and hurt, so hurt it had felt like she could hardly breathe. She had thought she'd been angry then, too, but she's realizing that has nothing on what she's feeling now: she'd been hurt by him and she'd forgiven him but she'd never been mad at him for doing what he did to her, and now she is, and it's so overwhelming she could scream.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn

**Author's Note:**

> \- this happens around the same time as [heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5596189), a little after.  
> \- i'm sure a lot of you know that burr was in fact maria reynolds's lawyer when she divorced her husband post-pamphlet, but like, true facts. i couldn't in good faith pass up that opportunity for drama, so here we are.

Aaron Burr's office is fancy, one of the rich-people offices downtown and every time Maria comes here she feels out of place. Sitting in the reception area, waiting for Burr to get out of whatever lunch meeting he's in, she tries not to show it, scrolling through her phone with the haughtiest, most bored look she can muster.

There are only a few people in the office, some suit sitting a few chairs down who keeps giving her looks, a few harried interns rushing back and forth. A woman came in a few minutes ago and is standing at the front desk; Maria looks up at her again, swearing that she looks familiar.

It takes Maria a second to place her, but when she does she almost laughs. Eliza Hamilton is standing primly at the front desk, waiting for the attendant instead of ringing the little silver bell on the counter. She wears her long hair straight down her back, and she's wearing sensible plain heels and a perfectly tailored, perfectly modest dress. 

"Aaron's not here," she says, knowing full well that she should keep her mouth shut.

Alex's wife turns to her. She frowns a little when she sees Maria, like she's trying to figure out how she knows her. Maria feels the ugly urge to laugh again.

"I mean, I assume that's why you're here," Maria goes on. "I know he and Alex were friends."

That's when it clicks, and Eliza's whole face seems to freeze, turned into a perfect mask. Her eyes go hard and dark, the first time Maria's seen any sign of life from her.

"I'm divorcing my husband," Maria explains casually, answering a question Eliza hadn't asked. "Aaron's my lawyer. He's great," she adds, knowing what Eliza will think, knowing what Eliza Hamilton thinks about her already. 

"I would've thought your husband would have more cause to divorce you," Eliza says coldly.

Maria snorts. "I coulda fucked my way through all of D.C., and I'd still be the one with more, uh, cause," she says. 

"Hm," Eliza says primly. 

There are an awkward few moments, Eliza still waiting by the front desk, Maria looking away from her trying to feign disinterest. She examines her nails until she feels Eliza's eyes on her. She looks up. "What?"

Eliza shakes her head a little, looking away. A moment later, though, she looks back at Maria, that same hard look in her eyes. "Why?" she asks, the bluntness at odds with her delicate, wilting-flower demeanor. 

"Why what?" Maria asks, knowing what she's asking, but wanting to make her work for it.

Eliza purses her lips, before she relents. "Why did you have an affair with my husband?" she asks carefully, like she's trying to keep her tone even and composed.

Maria thinks about saying because he was a good fuck or because he asked me to, just to see the look on Eliza's face. But instead she finds herself saying, "Honestly?" Eliza nods slightly, go on. "He was good to me," Maria says simply. Eliza frowns a little. "He loaned me money when my fuckhead of a husband drank ours away," Maria says, "he let me stay at his place when James started threatening me. He'd bring takeout when he'd visit me after work," she says. Eliza's face has gone carefully blank. "He was nice to me."

"So it didn't matter to you that he already had a family," Eliza says coldly. "A wife, children."

"Honestly, that's his problem," Maria says bluntly. Eliza's mouth tightens into a thin line. "Listen," Maria says then, fed up with this conversation, regretting having said anything, "I know that to you I'm just the girl who fucked your husband, but I have my own life and my own problems, okay? And you're not the only one he fucked over when he made that post, you're not the only one in the world who has problems. So honestly—" She stops, clenching her jaw.

At some point she had stood up; she has a couple inches on Eliza. Eliza looks a little surprised at her outburst, but not enough to cloud the steely look in her eyes. 

"You know what, fuck this," Maria mutters to herself after a moment. "I'll come back to see Aaron." She grabs her bag, and says to Eliza, "See you around, Mrs. Hamilton," before she goes for the door.

*

Eliza knocks on his study door, trying to keep her arm from trembling. "Yeah?" Alexander says from inside, and she twists the knob, lets herself in.

He looks up from his laptop, smiles distractedly when he sees her. "Hey," he says.

"I stopped by Aaron's office today," she says, keeping her voice carefully controlled. "I ran into one of his clients."

Alexander's face immediately changes, the reaction she'd dreaded.

She takes a breath. "Maria Reynolds," she says, watching him wince slightly at the conformation. "She's divorcing her husband. Ironic, hm?"

"Eliza—"

"So you knew," she says, voice sounding numb to her own ears. "You ran into her one time when you were visiting the office, right? You started talking, then, what, decided to give her another loan? Went back to her apartment—" She stops, aware that her voice doesn't even sound like her anymore, that it's gone slightly hysterical.

"No," Alex says firmly, "Eliza— _no_ , of course not."

She laughs, short and harsh. "Why not? You tell me you never did anything with anymore before her, or after her, so it must be something about her, right? So, why not? You run into her again, remember whatever it was that made you sleep with her the first time, and the second time, and every chance you got for a _year_ , Alexander, and I'm supposed to just _know_ you wouldn't start back up with her the first chance you got?"

"I made a mistake, Eliza," he says, low and urgent. He's standing now, leaning his hands on the desk, leaning toward her. "I—I fucked up, okay, I know I did, but I saw what happened, to us, to our family, and I would never, never do it again."

She shakes her head. "A mistake is when you forget something at the grocery store," she tells him coldly. "You were sleeping with her for months, and you're saying each and every time was a mistake?"

"Yes," he says emphatically. "Of course."

"So you just forgot you had a wife," she says, voice gone strangely toneless, "forgot you had a family, forgot this wasn't college anymore and you couldn't just sleep around with whoever you wanted."

"Eliza," he says, looking stricken.

"I can't—" she says, and turns away. She doesn't seem to have control over the words coming out of her mouth; she doesn't seem to have control over the sharp hot anger that's living inside her chest. And she is, she's angry, she's so angry and she doesn't know what to do with it all. When she'd first found out she'd been numb, and hurt, so hurt it had felt like she could hardly breathe. She had thought she'd been angry then, too, but she's realizing that has nothing on what she's feeling now: she'd been hurt by him and she'd forgiven him but she'd never been mad at him for doing what he did to her, and now she is, and it's so overwhelming she could scream.

But she doesn't: she makes herself say, "You'll sleep in here tonight. And for—a while. I need to—I need some time."

"Eliza," he says, still with that stricken look. "I didn't do anything," he protests.

She turns back to face him. "Yes, you did," she tells him. "If you'd never slept with her we wouldn't be having this conversation. I would never have suspected you of anything, Alexander, and I didn't." She stops, horrified at the sudden tightness in her throat. "I didn't. It never even occurred to me—" She takes a breath, composing herself. "So I'm not doing this because I'm some hysterical, jealous wife, I'm not doing this because I'm paranoid, I'm doing this because you've proven to me that you are perfectly capable of hurting me like this and I am sick and tired of being your stupid, devoted wife who would never, ever suspect you of a thing."

She manages to spit out the entire speech in a low, even voice, but by the time she finishes she can feel the tears spilling over onto her cheeks and she hates them, hates every part of this conversation. She thinks she might even be able to hate Alexander, who's staring at her, shocked, his own tears shining in his eyes.

"Goodnight, Alexander," she says coolly, and then lets herself out, shutting his study door firmly behind her. 

*

Maria gets out a long meeting with Burr and his team of lawyers, hungry and tired and ready to collapse on the couch in her tiny apartment. She pushes out the door to the elevator bank, and she almost makes it across the floor before he sees him, leaning against the wall with his phone out, clearly waiting for someone. Her, she realizes as he looks up, and she wonders suddenly if this is going where she thinks it's going. She wonders if she'll say no, if it is.

"Alex," she says, wanting perversely to get the first word in.

"Maria." He slips his phone back in his pocket. He's in a dress shirt and pants, but the first couple buttons of the shirt are unbuttoned and his tie is missing: he came here straight from work. He looks mad, and suddenly she knows what this is about.

"My wife said she ran into you here," he says, and she almost laughs at that, _my wife_. 

"Yeah," she says nonchalantly, just to piss him off more. "So what?"

"What did you say to her?" Alex demands.

"Nothing," she tells him.

"Please," Alex says harshly. "I know you said something."

"Why?" she demands, almost taunts. "She finally divorcing you?"

Alex clenches his jaw hard enough that can see a muscle tic. "No," he says coldly. After a moment, he relents: "She. . .confronted me." She raises her eyebrows. "I'm sleeping on the couch," he admits.

"Good for her."

Alex snorts, but the look on his face is still dark. The tension between them is taught and trembling, same as it always was. It's about sex—it's always about sex, with them—but it's about something else now, too. More complicated. Or maybe too simple: after everything, they're just exes, and they don't know how to be that. They don't know how to be anything to each other but what they'd been, the filthy furtive oddly tender thing they'd had between them.

"Burr tell you why he's my lawyer?" she says after a moment, when it's clear neither of them are going to cede ground. "I'm divorcing James."

He looks surprised. "I'm glad," he tells her quietly, honestly.

"Yeah," she says, just as honest. "Me, too."

For a long, tense moment they just stare at each other. There's a softness in his eyes that she remembers, and she remembers how easy it was, fucking him the sole simple thing in her life, and how much she misses that simplicity of his hands on her skin, in her hair, inside her. It wouldn't be the same again, she knows: she's still too mad about what he did to her with that fucking blog post, and besides, her life is better now, or it's getting there. She doesn't need him the way she had.

He's the first to look away. He clears his throat, says, "Anyway—" and then stops. 

"Well," she says. "I guess I won't see you around."

"Probably not," he agrees. He's watching her with that intense look she remembers, but there's no heat behind it now. He's just studying her, trying to understand her the way he tries to understand everything.

She smiles at him, small and a little wry. "Bye, Alex," she tells him, and then she turns, and walks away.

*

Eliza lies in bed, alone, staring at the shadowed ceiling. She's been trying to sleep for hours and can't seem to manage it; she wonders if Alexander is doing the same thing in his office, or if he's still working, or if he's fallen asleep slumped over his desk. She wonders if his office has the same empty hollow feeling as their—her—bedroom does, cold even in the dead of summer.

After the post and that first terrible day she had fallen asleep on Angelica's shoulder, cried-out and numb. She remembers waking up in the early hours of the morning with a headache and a leaden feeling in her stomach without being able to trace the source of either, before she remembered, crushingly. Angelica had fallen asleep next to her and she'd been grateful, her sister there next to her warm and certain, someone for Eliza to curl up next to and not feel so small.

Now the bed is cold and empty: she has the sudden girlish desire to call Angelica, ask if she could sleep over like she was eight again and sneaking next door to her sister's room whenever she had a bad dream. But she stays still, reminding herself that she did this, she made a choice. 

After the post she'd tortured herself picturing Alex and that girl— _Maria_ —in bed together, but now all she can think about is Maria saying, h _e was good to me_. All she can think about is the way she'd called him _Alex_ , so casually, like she wouldn't have thought of calling him anything else. 

She had made her peace with the fact that Alexander had slept with another woman, and so she'd thought she'd made her peace with the whole affair. But now she keeps thinking about the small, intimate things: not the fact that he had sex with her, but how he had, if it had been guilty and perfunctory or if it had been—more. If they'd smiled at each other or laughed or laid together afterward, content. If he'd thought of her or if he really had forgotten, made himself forget. If Maria knows things about him, the way he drums his fingers when he's thinking or the exact look in his eye when an idea strikes him. The reverent look he gets during sex, face open and eyes hooded.

She turns sharply, staring at the wall now instead of the ceiling. She doesn't want to be thinking about any of this, but she can't seem to stop: she'd thought she'd put all this behind her, thought that after years now she would have gotten over it. Instead it still hurts, more than she thinks it should. Instead, she's sleeping in an empty bed again; again, she feels like she can't trust Alexander anymore and that hurts too, just as much as the reason for it.

Eliza turn over again, and closes her eyes, and tries not to think about anything.

**Author's Note:**

> for those interested, i've posted an extra scene/coda [on tumblr](http://schuylering.tumblr.com/post/136688113113/an-extra-scenecoda-to-burn-feat-philip-angie) feat. the elder hamilkids.


End file.
